Website Design

            Who knew designing a website could be so easy?

             Today I learned just how easy it truly was as a guest speaker in my ED 270 class walked the class through a tutorial on WordPress. In under an hour we learned how to create a page, a website theme, links, videos, blog posts,  and so much more. It's been a long time since I learned so much in such a small time frame, and actually enjoy myself while doing so. The tutorial made me extremely excited to dig further into the world of website design and start my own websites. The uses for having my own websites are mind blowing in their breadth and depth. One use I will take advantage of in the future is creating a website for my classroom. Having a website where I can easily communicate to students and parents what lessons, tools, etc. we're going to be doing in class is invaluable. I could even use the website to have notifications when exams and projects are due, post a calendar of school and class activities and even update parents on how their students are doing. The possibilities are only limited to your imagination when it comes to website design, and that is an amazing thing. One that I can't wait to take advantage of myself and hopefully gift my future students with.

Hour of Code

     

               Last week my ED 270 class provided a crash course in coding. When I heard that our activity for the day was coding my first thought was "good luck with that. There's no way I'll be able to code." I was proven wrong in under an hour. How? Well, my professor introduced the class to the groundbreaking website that is Hour of Code. This website teaches people of all levels, from kindergarden to computer science majors, the art of coding through interactive games. I personally chose to play Frozen and Angry Birds to learn basic coding and was surprised by how easy and fun coding was. This is definitely a tool I would use in my future classroom, especially considering that in twenty years most of the jobs my students will have will involve coding, or at the very least computer science.

If we teach kids like we taught kids yesterday, we rob them of tomorrow. We must prepare them for their future and Hour of Code is a great tool to do just that.

Generating Apps

                   Yesterday, my ED 270 was pretty cool. Why? Because I was given the chance to create my own app! As most people do, I always thought about how cool it would be create an app, and maybe get rich from it, but assumed that you needed to be a tech genus to make an app. The reality is that as long as you have access to a computer and know basic computer skills you can generate your very own app. My mind went into overdrive thinking about all the different ideas I had for an app. I choose to make one with an educational theme that I could use in my classroom. On my app, there was a calendar for important class, school and community events, a tab for lesson plans, a tab for extra resources, and alerts for when projects and tests were. To be able to give such a device to parents that would easily allow them to know what's going on at school and how their child was doing would be invaluable. This will be a huge part of my future classroom, as will using other apps to enhance my lessons and help students learn and have fun while doing so.

Podcasting

                 Last week, I was introduced to, and had the opportunity to explore, podcasts. Now, I knew what podcasts were. I had just never listened to one. The amount of podcasts available is mind blowing and quite overwhelming. Basically any subject you could think of there's a podcast for it, which means that it could be a phenomenal resource for the classroom. However, to sort through all the ones that are unhelpful and find one that covers the topic you want in a way that could enhance a lecture is extremely time consuming.  In a half hour of surfing through all the podcasts available from ITunes, I found a lot of interesting podcasts but none that I would use in a classroom without modifying. Given this, if a teacher has time it would more effective for the teacher to create  their own podcasts. Such podcasts could be good for kids to listen to at home and for review of materials. Not to mention, if a kid had been sick or away, podcasts would be a simple way to keep the child on track with school. I'm definitely keeping this in mind for my future classroom and can't wait to create a podcast of my own.

Real or Hoax?

           

              Last Friday, my teacher for ED 270 gave the class the opportunity to test out real and hoax websites. It was a really fun experience-- the class was laughing as we scoped and evaluated sites about pregnant men, the country of Ruritania, and jackalope conspiracies. I found this lesson entertaining but also very helpful as it taught us how important it is to teach our future students about safe Internet usage and how to identify legitimate and accurate websites. From this activity, I plan on teaching my students about how to identify fake websites, especially before I have them explore the Internet or do research projects. It might even be a fun to have the students create their own websites and then have the class see if they can spot which ones are real or fake, using the students' creations. Overall, this is definitely a lesson to keep in mind for my own course work and for the future.

The Final Product

 

             A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I had the opportunity to learn how to use iMovie through a video project. To remind you guys, the topic of the video was going to be what words can a person use other than the r-word in conversation. This topic is near and dear to my heart as I have younger family members with intellectual disabilities who have to deal with being called the r-word and bullying, on top of learning the best way for them to navigate society and still be happy. Today, people use the r-word as a slur in conversations, which is completely unnecessary as there are thousands of words in the English language that could articulate your point more effectively. I'm proud of the job I did on this assignment and had a great time interviewing people, as well as learning such a cool tech tool. After this project, I can see how having students create their own videos could be a fun and interactive way for kids to learn and take charge of their own learning.

            On the day of turning in my video, I was also taught how to use Google Earth. Now, like most kids nowadays I have used Google Earth to travel through my own neighborhood and exploring the Loch Ness. In this class, I learned the wide scope of the app and all you can do with it. A cool feature is that you can create tours and at the spots you want to travel to you can include information, pictures, and links to other sources. This could be a great tool to teach kids about their local neighborhood and states. Or you could use it to show students different types of animal habitats, the lands of past and current wars, battles, historical events or even for comparing the different types of towns across the world and how similar conditions cause different effects in different living situations. I can't wait to explore this app and utilize it in my classroom someday.

The World of Video Making

 

        Welcome to the realm of cinematography! Last Friday, in my ED 270 class, I was brought into this exciting new world for the very first time. We were tasked with pairing up in groups and creating our own video to portray a message of your own choosing. I am really excited about the subject my team has decided to do; the r-word. For those of you who don't know, the r-word is retarded. The term retarded has been used as a derogatory term against people who are alter-abled mentally and physically. It has become more and more common for people to use the r-word in every day conversations when referencing something one thinks is stupid, bad, etc. This is unacceptable. Did you know that a bill was passed in 2010, called Rosa's Law, that stripped the term "mental retardation" from federal health, education and labor policy? Given this, my group has decided to create a montage of people saying words that a person could use other than the r-word. Hopefully, we can create an awesome, powerful video as we learn as a group how to navigate IMovie, video editing, and the world of cinematography.

Photoshop Blew My Mind

 

          Last Friday was the second class of my Technology in Education class, and it was a doozy. Mind = Blown. Literally non-stop learning from the moment I walked into the computer lab. Whatever were we learning? The amazing program that is Photoshop. We learned to identify between altered and real photographs and how to create our own blended pictures. It was a roller coaster of feeling like "Oh my god, this is AMAZING" one moment and "I'll never remember how to do all of this" the next. It was a Russian Doll where every minute you uncover another layer, another matryoshka doll, to this amazing program. The possibilities are endless, especially when you think about all of the applications in a classroom setting.

          Go simple with making pictures of animals in different habitats and having students identify if the habitats are correct for lower grade levels to having the older kids make there own marketing posters about hot topics and issues facing society today. An example of such a poster is the one I created and posted above this entry, depicting a glacier melting in a pair of cupped, into a bowl with a town in it. This poster is showing how humans have increased the effects of global warming and is calling for action. I created this poster by combining a picture of a fishbowl I had at home, pictures of cupped hands and glaciers from the internet, and scanning a picture of a castle. It was quite the learning curve with how to use Photoshop, but thanks to all the incredible people who make YouTube videos I got the hang of blending, deleting backgrounds, combing pictures and so much more that my brain hurts just thinking about it. Learning how to use Photoshop myself made me realize how important it would be to give such a diverse tool to my future students. It could be a wonderful tool to engage kids, especially those students who are more creative, who are hands on and/or visual learners, or for kids who are struggling or aren't the type who learn by reading, sitting at a desk, and listening to a lecture all class period.

         You could have your students make similar posters about a variety of topics like politics, gay rights, current laws, social media, women's rights, etc. Nothing is impossible as long as you can imagine it, for with Photoshop you can combine and create your dreams, hopes, and give your imagination life. I know I can't wait to continue learning about Photoshop and apply it in my own studies and my future classroom.

Note: For those of you who are students, Adobe is having a special for students where Lightroom and Photoshop are only 10 dollars a month. Or if you want all the Adobe products, students only have to pay 20 dollars a month. If you're a poor college student like me, and might not want to purchase your own and don't have access to Photoshop on a school computer, Adobe has a free Photoshop app that is very impressive and user friendly called Photoshop Mix. The app can do a lot of Photoshop applications with just a touch of your finger and is able to use internet, Facebook, or your personal photos and send any of your creations to your email, Adobe account, and/or to Photoshop on the computer for more advance editing. Try it o

The Tech Generation

           Forty years ago students were still using typewriters in schools. Today, it seems like every student has their own laptop. In fact, if you asked kids younger than thirteen what a typewriter is they wouldn't be able to tell you. We are the technology generation. Hand us any electronic device and we can probably figure it out in five minutes flat. In fact, the average kid spends over 53 hours on electronic devices every week. So, why shouldn't we use those devices to our advantage to help, inspire and encourage learning in and outside of the classroom? To accomplish this, current and future educators need to become fluent in the language of technology. As a future educator myself, I thought I was fluent enough and had enough tech tools at my disposal. I was proved wrong with one class period of my Technology in Education class. Within the span of three hours, the professor was able to greatly increase my repertoire. For instance, I learned about resources like Big Huge Labs. On this website you can take pictures and use them to create trading cards, puzzles, maps, games, etc. Just playing around with the site and all it could do was sparking ideas for future lesson plans; using puzzles to teach about animals and their biology, using a trading card game where the cards are generals and weapons so that students could re-play historic battles and wars, or using maps to teach about geography. The possibilities were endless, and that was only one website. I also learned about another site, Go2Web20, that lists hundreds of apps that can be used for a variety of things and could be utilized in the classroom. One app, in particular, I really was impressed by. It turned the book, The Odyssey, into a video game where students would read and progress through each chapter while completing adventures and challenges. I loved this as it would keep students who struggle with reading engaged and promote understanding of the material. It would also be a great tool to catch students up if they had been sick or if you received a new student during the unit. There were similar apps for a whole host of books and subjects, and it made me so excited to introduce these new tools to the students who I currently tutor and to my future students. It just goes to show you that despite growing up in the era of technology there is always something new to learn. I can't wait to see what this class will teach me next week.